


frozen time between hearses and caskets

by Princess_Sarcastia



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Gen, Goodbyes, and the connection between vanya's powers and klaus' powers, except for that scene in the car with Vanya, exploration of klaus' ghostly powers, i Did Not Like klaus' lack of empathy in season 2, so uhhh I fixed that thanks, teen audiences rating mainly for klaus' pottymouth, vague mentions of klaus having flashbacks, we were SOL for empathy from Klaus this season
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:27:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26006449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princess_Sarcastia/pseuds/Princess_Sarcastia
Summary: Ghostscantime travel, actually, and everything is a little kinder; because kindness is important, even if you end up in the same places.Because, "if you could/retell the tale wouldn't you want/to tell it kinder?"
Relationships: Ben Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Ben Hargreeves & Vanya Hargreeves
Comments: 18
Kudos: 127





	frozen time between hearses and caskets

**Author's Note:**

> Fuck that noise, Ben gets his goodbyes. _Klaus_ gets his goodbye. Title from, "I wanna get better," by The Bleachers. When I first heard that line I knew it was meant for Klaus and Ben. 
> 
> Poem snippet in the summary from poemsfrompersephone, here: https://poemsforpersephone.tumblr.com/post/145021756099/what-if-when-icarus-fell-apollo-caught-him-before

“Well, unfortunately, ghosts can’t time travel,” Klaus says, playing at exasperated and put-upon.

“ _Klaus, don’t be an asshole_ ,” Ben intones from the corner of the room, but Klaus can hear the edge of desperation in his voice. 

It’s been years since either of them could even lay eyes on their siblings, let alone speak to them. When Allison appeared at the edge of that pool, it was like _heroin_ ; that kind of emotional high could be addictive, if he let it, and he would know. Seeing and being seen are kind of important, apparently.

Nobody ever sees Ben but Klaus.

Except for three years ago, in Vanya’s theater.

Klaus heaves a sigh, letting his shoulders rise and fall. “Oh, fine, you big baby.” He throws up his hands as they take on a distinctly blue hue.

And the whole room… _stops_.

“Ben,” someone says, or maybe they all say it, and then Diego is in front of their dead teenaged brother and clutching desperately at his stupid leather jacket, and Ben is clutching back and crying. 

He sighs again, for real this time, and lets them have this moment. Even Five seems swept up in the emotion of it all, hovering just on the edge of the crowd with his hands stuffed in his pockets and a constipated look on his face.

“So that’s our brother?” Vanya says from _right behind him_ , jesus christ!

“God, we should have put a bell on you,” Klaus says. “Yeah, that’s Ben.”

“Ben,” Vanya draws out his name, like she’s trying it out, and Klaus glances back at her. There’s a hint of some _je ne sais quoi_ , a glimmer of confused grief, in her eyes—like she wants to cry with no idea why, or how.

Vanya, who got teary when they stepped on ants as kids, went berserk and killed the whole world…and then conveniently forgot all about it. Hmm. Klaus has some ideas about that, personally, but he sees no need to share with the class; in his experience, people will remember terrible shit in their own time. Trying to force it will only set her off again.

Plus, he’s not nearly drunk enough for that conversation, even after a morning of margaritas with Allison, who’s turned into a _wonderful_ enabler.

Ben finds him briefly from the center of their little gaggle of siblings, seemingly content with more attention than he’s had in decades.

“I missed you all,” he hears Ben say, and watches their dead brother look at Vanya with grief that isn’t confused at all.

* * *

They stumble out of Allison’s house, away from her lovely husband—really, Klaus can’t even begin to explain how hard it is to find a partner willing to hide a body for you—and straight into the car Klaus sped over here in. Diego, of course, insists on driving, but Allison is still upset over Raymond and Klaus can’t be bothered, so it works out.

Ben calls shotgun and Klaus automatically pulls Allison into the backseat with him.

“I just,” Allison clears her throat, “Vanya?”

“Again? What are the odds, am I right?” Klaus jibes, and flinches dramatically away from Allison when she elbows him.

“Last time, it was Luther and the rest of you morons that set her off. But none of us have seen her since she left after the dinner from hell, so it couldn’t have been one of us.”

“ _What is she even doing in the federal building in the first place?_ ” Ben asks.

Klaus hums, “good point, Ben,” and relays it to the others.

He can hear the leather steering wheel creak as Diego tightens his grip. “I don’t—I’m not sure, I was moving pretty quickly to avoid getting caught at Headquarters.”

“But?” Allison prompts when he doesn’t continue.

“But,” Diego’s jaw tightens, “I think she got arrested. By the FBI?”

“The _FBI_?” Klaus screws up his face. “Who the hell—Allison, did you get her involved with the SJCC in the, what, ten minutes we were all together?”

“No, no, I didn’t. But…I mean, someone named _Vanya_ with _memory loss_ in _1963_ when the president is in town…” Allison trails off, like the words she emphasized will make some sort of sense when put together.

“They think she’s a communist spy,” Diego says flatly.

“Oh!” Klaus exclaims. “Oh,” he repeats, when that sinks in. “Oh, that—that won’t be good.”

“ _No, it won’t_ ,” Ben agrees.

Silence fills the car like Agent Orange, and Klaus is just _choking_ on all the implications.

* * *

His ears haven’t rung like this since helicopters and machine guns and Dave and _medic! I need a fucking medic!,_ but Klaus foists the memory back into the arms of his subconscious because now’s not the time for a panic attack, goddammit. 

Allison and Diego are saying something, but he can’t quite hear them; it’s hard to focus with wave after wave of energy flowing into him and _into_ him, into that terrible void he doesn’t like to think about and in fact has spent his whole life drowning out. The energy Vanya is pulsating through the federal building feels like nails on the chalkboard of his soul. 

“Question, guys,” he interrupts, “Who are we trying to save Vanya from, again?”

“ _The FBI_ ,” Diego, Allison, and Ben all say together, and in the same _you’re-an-idiot-Klaus_ tone of voice, too, isn’t that adorable.

Joke’s on them, he’s about to say something relevant. “But if they’re all sucking ceiling right now, why hasn’t she stopped?”

All the bodies scattered about with their eyes burnt out of their skulls is a pretty graphic kind of horrific, even for Klaus, who’s seen every kind of dead body there is. 

Actually…

Klaus waves to get Ben’s attention. The others turn to look at him and Klaus ignores them, for once, oh how the turn-tables! “Why aren’t there any ghosts?” He shouts, hands still tight around his ears.

Not Ben, though. He’s just standing there, arms at his sides, like Vanya’s energy isn’t on quite the same wavelength for him as it is for the rest of them. “ _I don’t_ ,” he frowns, “ _yeah, that is weird. Can’t you feel that, though?"_

Klaus hesitates, then nods back, refusing to explain to Allison and Diego when they make encouraging gestures. There’s no way to articulate it to them, anyway, not in time for them to understand what it means that Vanya can affect his connection with Ben. That Vanya can, apparently, banish the other ghosts, the ones Klaus isn’t anchoring here in the land of the living.

Pressure is building in too-tight air, like a balloon pushed to the brink of bursting. According to Diego, Vanya will defrost the Cold War in another fifteen, maybe twenty minutes or so. 

“Can Ben go find out what’s going on with her, then?” Diego shouts at him, and Klaus looks at Ben, who nods and strolls down the hallway more easily than they could, but it feels…weird. Something in his chest tightens, in that same place Vanya’s reaching and Klaus doesn’t like to be aware of it the way he’s forced to be right now.

God, he wants a drink.

It takes almost five minutes for Ben to get there and back, and Klaus feels the blood drain out of his face when he gets a look at Ben’s expression.

“ _They hooked her up to some kind of generator. Klaus, the readout says it’s up to a thousand volts,”_ Ben says quickly. “ _She’s seizing pretty violently; I don’t think she even knows what she’s doing_.”

Klaus lets out a blistering string of curses, the kind Sarge would be proud of—come to think of it, Klaus probably learned it from Sarge. 

“What, what is it?” Allison shouts, leaning in and trying to look where he’s looking, where Ben stands, intangible and desperate.

“They’re torturing her!” Klaus shouts back.

“So, this is some kind of defense mechanism?” Diego adds his two cents, though Klaus doesn’t think the _what_ of this is really relevant right now.

“We have to go turn it off,” Klaus darts to look at Allison and Diego and then back at Ben. Pressure keeps building in his ears, against his skin, in his brain, in his soul. _How the hell are we going to get back there_? He’s pretty sure they won’t even be able to stand, let alone walk a hundred and fifty feet. They’ll pop like grapes before they reach the halfway point.

Allison and Diego are shouting something else, now, but it doesn’t matter, because Klaus is looking at Ben and Ben is looking at him and Vanya is reaching that point inside him that anchors Ben, even from all the way back here, and Vanya’s going to blow up this building with them inside it and start World War III and they can’t reach her but Ben _can_.

Ben can.

He shivers.

Seventeen plus years together means Klaus knows exactly what Ben is thinking, because he’s thinking it, too. 

“Are you sure?” He leans into Ben’s space, and Ben crouches down so they’re eye to eye.

“ _I’m sure_ ,” Ben says easily, like this is _easy_ , god, what a prick.

Something twists in his chest, and he can’t tell if it’s Vanya or his own stupid feelings. “No take-back-sies this time, _mein bruder_. If we do this—”

“ _We?_ ” Ben raises his eyebrows and smirks.

“Oh, please, this is at least forty percent me and you know it,” Klaus narrows his eyes petulantly. 

His brother shifts weight he doesn’t have back onto his heels, freeing his hands to rise in front of him, palms toward Klaus. “ _You remember the first time we tried this?_ ”

“We?” Klaus mocks, but takes his own hands off his ears and presses them into Ben’s, letting that peculiar shade of blue spread to envelop them both. Not quite visible, not quite tangible, but it’s _power._ Parts of Klaus flow into Ben like Vanya’s energy waves are crashing into everything around him, twining with the anchor between them until it’s a constant stream Ben can feed off of.

He sucks in a shuddery breath and blows out a shaky one. Allison and Diego are staring at him, wide-eyed, but he keeps ignoring them in favor of Ben.

“ _Do you think she’ll remember me this time?_ ” Ben asks, smiling at him in that soft way Klaus thought they’d agreed to stop doing years ago. Rude!

...

Oh, what the hell. 

Klaus quirks a real smile back at Ben and squeezes his hands. “She’d better.”

* * *

_“I remember everything.”_

_“Tell Klaus something for me, would you?”_

**Author's Note:**

> There would be more scenes that change with Ben's input, obviously; especially the dinner with their father. In a perfect world, Ben would keep them from that mess entirely, and maybe air some grievances about the shitty way Reginald acted at his funeral in the process. Alas, the writing gods didn't give me the spoons for that.
> 
> Plus, I kind of like the book-ends feel of this, anyway.


End file.
